Jerusalem on Earth

As the guns in Jerusalem fell silent in 1967 nothing could be heard across the hushed city except the faint flutter of history. Then it started again — the rumble of heavy vehicles, the unforgiving crump of explosives. This time the sounds were of bulldozers plowing through border barriers and the demise of minefields. Jewish and Arab Jerusalem were separated briefly only by a strip of neutered no-man’s-land so narrow that a boy could throw a stone across it, so filled with shadows that it was impossible to probe its depth. What would emerge from those shadows?Jerusalem on Earth is an anecdotal overview of the turbulent post-Six Day War decades. This revised edition expands on the first, published in 1988, and includes a close-up view of Mayor Teddy Kollek shaping the city during his 28-year tenure. The author covered City Hall for the Jerusalem Post during much of this period and encountered a world-class collection of visionaries and eccentrics.

-An Australian sheepshearer who wants to be recognized as king of Judah sets fire to al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, third holiest site in Islam. Riots in the Moslem world reportedly kill thousands and Arab armies are ordered to prepare for holy war. Israeli police quickly track down the arsonist, heading off further deterioration.

-An ultra-orthodox eccentric crossed into Jordan as a young man to obtain weapons for a revolt against the secular Zionist state. He is returned and tried. Thirty years later he invites his former prosecutor to join him in a learned debate before a packed hall on the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche who wrote that god is dead.

-Arab and Jewish underworlds in Jerusalem are the first economic sectors to join forces after the Six Day War. The police are not far behind, forming Arab-Jewish patrols.

-A rare look into the inner sanctums of the Hassidic world when street conflicts break out among feuding factions. Yeshiva students “take to the mattresses” mafia-style as tensions mount.

-The Vatican sues one of its own religious orders for selling property to a Jewish institution. Jewish lawyers expert in church law represent each side. In the end, the government aborts the sale in order to demonstrate that Israel is not out to Judaize Jerusalem. Not long afterwards, the Vatican establishes diplomatic crelations with the Jewish state.

-Danish-born Sister Abraham, who speaks 15 languages and navigates the city on a bicycle, is the first white woman to serve as a nun in the Ethiopian church. 

-Israeli army reserve units maintained an enclave behind Jordanian lines on Mount Scopus under UN auspices for 19 years. Years later, intelligence officers would reveal its secrets.

-In what psychologists call "the Jerusalem syndrome" several tourists are briefly hospitalized each year when they assume the persona of biblical figures on Jerusalem’s streets.

-The murder of two nuns, a mother and daughter, in a convent temporarily suspends hostilities between the "White Russian" church in East Jerusalem and the "Red Russian" church in West Jerusalem.

-A Jewish family and an Arab family, both with numerous children, find themselves neighbors when the border barriers are removed. They would become virtually one family.